The politics of anti-austerity remained relatively muted in Canada until the massive Quebec student strike in 2012. While the symbol of the red square seemed to imply solidarity among the strikers, it was frequently unclear what the goals of this movement was beyond protesting tuition fee hikes. For some the strike was about resisting neo-liberalism and the "modèle québécois", the system of labour legislation, educational reform and public welfare that emerged from the 1960s Quiet Revolution. But for others the strike signaled the possibility to go beyond the past. This was expressed as a desire to pick up where the 1970s social democracy left off through demands such as free tuition. Others viewed Quebec's social democratic past as being part of the problem. They judged that parliamentary approaches, in the wake of Occupy and the Arab Spring, had grown irrelevant in the face of a direct democracy that has carried the strike through five months in spite of massive police reaction.

Whatever differences in goals, the strike fell short of expectations. While the tuition fee increases were placed on hold, the election of a sovereigntist (Quebec nationalist) social democratic party resulted in an underwhelming resolution. Unity among different Left factions during the strike has given way to acrimonious debates over whether anarchist or socialist tactics are to blame over the ultimate defeat of the movement. The attempt to overcome the past through the strike has ironically stirred up older historical sediments of the history of the Canadian Left that seem difficult to overcome.

The teach-in will explore the current crisis of the Canadian Left following the Quebec student strike through the history of the Left in Canada.

Andony Melathopoulos is an interdisciplinary PhD student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. He has been broadly involved with the Canadian labour, environmental and health care advocacy . He was the first Canadian member of Platypus and currently functions as the Vice President for Platypus in Canada and the US Midwest.

The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.